This is big for many, many reasons, not the least of which is the challenge that Google must face in supporting a language that is so challenged at running in a modular fashion. I will be extremely curious to see if the announcement includes OSGi (or, god help us, JSR-277) as a way to mitigate the difficulties in "mashing up" different applications, services and libraries in the same VM. Alternatively, like the Python implementation of AppEngine, it could just be that a restrictive set of Google libraries will be required, which in turn dictate which versions of core common libraries are used in any given application. The former would allow for a wider variety of applications, but the latter is far more likely, in my opinion.

Will any old Java-compatible library not considered "common" be importable, I wonder? How will they achieve the same balance of control and flexibility they achieved with Python? Somehow, I don't find myself concerned that the end product will have any serious bugs, just that there will be hidden restrictions that most Java developers will find annoying at first.

At the very least, I think we can anticipate that the Java architecture on AppEngine will closely align with the Python architecture, meaning all data access will be BigTable, etc. So the same pros and cons will apply to AppEngine whether you use Java, JavaScript or Python. Which still leaves an amazingly large market for Google to grab in the PaaS space.

Hey, Google, if you do have a launch party, I would certainly love an invitation...

About Me

James Urquhart is a widely experienced enterprise software field technologist. James started his career programming a manufacturing job tracking system on the Macintosh (circa 1991), and slowly expanded his experience to include distributed systems architectures, online community and identity systems, and most recently utility computing and cloud computing architectures. He has held positions in pre and post sales services, software engineering, product marketing, and program management for the online developer communities of one of the largest developer sites in the world. His admittedly schizophrenic background is driven by a desire to work with technologies that are disruptive, but that simplify computing overall.

James is also an avid blogger. His primary blog, recently renamed "The Wisdom of Clouds" (http://blog.jamesurquhart.com), is focused on utility computing, cloud computing and their effect in enteprises and individuals.

In addition to his online work, James is the father of two children: a son, Owen; and a daughter, Emery; and the husband of the perfect friend and wife, Mia. James lives in Alameda, CA, plays rock and bluegrass guitar.